How Tissot’s staying relevant in 2016

Helmed by a president who believes in keeping it that way

163-year-old Tissot, which became the world’s first mass-produced pocket watch manufacturer in its first year of existence, is today among the top five Swiss watchmakers in terms of production. Last year, it made over 4 million watches, a large chunk of the little-over-28 million produced overall in Switzerland. Tissot’s president, François Thiébaud, has completed two decades as the brand’s marshal and is also president of the Swiss Exhibitors’ Committee at Baselworld, who are the most high-profile of the 1,200- plus exhibitors at the world’s largest luxury watch fair. That lends him a valuable overarching perspective of how the Swiss watch biz operates. He’s also a whiz when it comes to operating out of India – he headed Swatch Group’s India operations from 2003 to 2005.

Do you believe the Swiss make the best watches in the world?

I can’t and will never say that Swiss watches are better than, say, Asian watches. Globally, there are over a billion watches produced every year – including in China and India. The Swiss watch industry produced only 28.1 million last year, or just over 2 per cent. I like to compare Swiss watches to French wine though. You can make wine anywhere, but a French wine is a French wine. Similarly, there’s a certain Swiss sensitivity behind the watches we make that includes its design, the communication and the after-sales [service] that make these products go beyond just telling the time and instead become something that is a part of your identity.

Has the smartwatch affected Tissot?

No. We’ve been affected by the economy and the political climate in some countries, but not by the smartwatch. Nowadays, most smartwatches are basically mobile phones adapted to the size of your wrist. They can call, record audio, take pictures, and they also happen to tell you the time. At Tissot, we primarily address time and work around that to combine technology and aesthetics to show it as beautifully as possible and give an emotional value to the timepiece on your wrist.

And Tissot’s been making a sort-of predecessor to the smartwatch, the tactile T-Touch, since 1999?

Yes, we’ve been doing it for the last 17 years. We have the technology to make a smartwatch and we can make it with a Swiss-made tag. But I don’t believe it will sell in big quantities.

This year, though, Tissot’s made a full-fledged connected watch, the new Smart- Touch.

We tried to do something similar with Microsoft back in 2005, but it wasn’t a success. Over the years, we’ve acquired the know-how on smartwatches, and so now we’ve built a T-Touch that can be synced to your phone. It has functions like GPS, trackers and weather updates. And it’s solar charged. Even if you don’t connect it to a mobile phone, it can still work perfectly well as a regular watch with functions like the altimeter, barometer and compass.

You headed up the Swatch Group in India for a long time. Where’s India at on the global luxury watch scene?

Within the Asian continent, not only does India have one of the most educated populations but also a very global one – you have Indians living and working in London, France, Spain, everywhere. But if you have high import taxes in India, people can’t buy what they want to buy in India.

So what’s the potential for Tissot in India?

In India, we sold less than 200,000 pieces last year. I believe that the potential for Tissot in India could be a million watches annually. We’ve recently got Virat Kohli joining Deepika Padukone as our brand ambassador in India.

While Tissot is a value proposition, do you feel that a few Swiss watchmakers overprice their watches?

Say you have two painters – one known and the other unknown – and you commission a painting. Of course, the one that is known will cost more than the one that is unknown. And when you compare the two, you may realize that the one that is unknown has made a better painting. What you are paying for is the signature, and all the history of that signature. Today, people have several tools of information at their disposal that allows them to check whether they are paying the right price for a watch.

What’s your favourite Tissot novelty from Baselworld 2016?

Given that Tissot participated in the first-ever Baselworld back in 1917, I’d pick a vintage watch from this year’s collection: the Heritage 1936, that’s inspired by a pocket watch and reminds me of that time.